stw-audio

so this is my first ever kvr review. to be honest, i never found a plugin that i loved so much that it screamed instant review! reflex is that plugin. if anybody reading this is not familiar with reflex it is a plugin that adds ambience to source input.

the source can be a virtual instrument, an effect, a sample, what ever you choose. reflex can make sounds so big that the source input becomes replaced with reflex itself making the original source a cavernous wall of sound. a really cool use i find for reflex is to take a simple analog synth like tal uno lx which is a roland juno 60 emulation and run it through reflex. doing this allows a person with zero understanding of sound design to use simple sounding patches, combined with an LFO to create moving sounds that rival pads from the big boys like omnisphere, padshop, alchemy. well thats a bit of a stretch, but lets just say you can make amazing moving pads, atmospheres and textures using this method. now, when added to a synth like omnisphere, padshop, alchemy, now were talking.

reflex when added to a reverb like valhalla vintage along with other fx, can make the most beautiful sounds ive ever heard. reflex can also be used for making cinematic drums. anybody who has heard todays trailer music knows that the drums in these scores are huge and in your face. using drum samples of your choosing you can create very similar sounds like you hear from heavyocity products like damage and dm-307 plugins.

i believe in due time reflex and the developer of this plugin will get the credit it/he deserves. reflex is still quite a widely unknown plugin but its only a matter of time before this plugin becomes an industry standard in film/trailer producer circles, and ambient/atmospheric genres of music.

This is a great tool, low on CPU, no-nonsense GUI, makes it very easy to get into, and it delivers a great result.

Controls are so simple that they are almost self-explanatory. The big knob in the middle controls the Decay, goes without saying I guess as that function really is the heart of any reverb/echo unit.

The small knob satellites controls (clockwise from left) size, input, rate, depth, mix and damp (hi/lo)

The Rate and Depth functions moonlights as a LFO and can be tweaked to give a wobbly tremolo effect. A better title for the Damp section could maybe be filter, as it aids in filtering out either hi or lo frequencies.

All in all this freebie delivers a smooth result. Easily my choice of effect when I quickly need to apply reverb/space to a VST instrument.